


everybody is a book of blood (wherever we're opened, we're red)

by TolkienGirl



Series: All That Glitters: Gold Rush!AU [36]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Disturbing Themes, Dubious Consent, I am not getting into the AO3 tag mess for this so just...Thuringwethil is a vampire, Other, POV First Person, here it is the culmination of Maedhros's self-destructive choices (so far), title from Clive Barker
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-31
Updated: 2019-03-31
Packaged: 2019-12-30 03:32:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18307319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: "Despair has its own calms." - Bram Stoker





	everybody is a book of blood (wherever we're opened, we're red)

My letters come and go by only three appointed postmen. They have names, I suppose, but I identify them by their deformities. One has a drooping, palsied eye; one has a hunchback, though it does not hinder his riding; and one is missing an ear—but only because of me.

He hates me, but he must obey me, and I find that endlessly amusing. He was rather handsome, before. Handsome and too greedy with his hands.

Less amusing, I own, is being required to lie in wait like a hunting cat at South Pass. Through this sordid gap passes wagon after wagon. All carry rawboned blockheads, intent on fortunes that shall never be theirs. I keep sharp for mentions of the railroad, mentions of Manwe, and of course, any news of the Irishman and his sons.

Bauglir hates the Irishman more than his own brother, I sometimes think. Annatar does not agree, but Annatar is jealous even of Bauglir’s hatred, and will not see it bandied about to those whom he has never met.

For my part, I am eager to meet Feanor—and more eager to meet his sons, who are remembered now in many a town along our vast eye-line. Most of them are boys, still, and yet (I learn) they are quick to maim and kill. The eldest, according to our sources among the gentler sex, is a man in more pursuits than killing.

The air is cold at night when they arrive; five wagons, and not enough men to fill them. It is October; I have waited and watched here since July. I look down from the windows of my rented room as they load  wheat and guns.

They are bold, to think that no one here shall know them.

 

I drape a shawl over my hair and step out into the dusty streets. How I loathe the smell of horses! But I have prey in mind, and I must study its movements.

Feanor looks younger than I expected. Was he a child when he stole Rumil the map-maker? I was, then. I did not yet know Bauglir; he found me through Annatar, who found me wandering in the forests of Quebec.

Some might say he took pity on the burned witch’s daughter. I know better. I know that _pity_ is unknown to Annatar, as it is to me.

Annatar is many things. Sometimes I feel my skin sear at his very glance; sometimes I wish to gnaw off more than his ears.

Keeping to shadows, I listen while Feanor barters with a butcher. Two of his sons—twins with carrot-shocks of hair and freckled cheeks—scuff their boots as they wait with him.

They are also younger than I expected, despite all reports. The burning of Ulmo’s Bridge is told, now, like a ghost-story.

And how many men have they killed since then? I have heard little of them for weeks.

 

I catch Feanor’s eyes resting upon me. I smile, and turn away, back towards the saloon and my little, windowed room.

In the west, we all believe in ghosts.

 

The town is a-bustle with new arrivals, but the red-headed eldest and two men who travel with his party enter the eating-house a few hours later. I am waiting in the corner like a spider shuttered by her web—see how long I have known Bauglir? To compare myself to such a thing?—and at first they take no notice of me.

I bare my teeth at the usual sluts who wait by the card tables, and I crook my finger in the direction of those bright tresses, now bent over a round of poker.

“Mine,” I say, and as all of them are very fond of their hair and eyes and fingers, they listen.  

I level my gaze at him, my perfect prey, and I see that he looks back.

He is pocketing gold. I sip my gin, and feel the cold bottle in my own pocket, and I wait.

At last, he makes his way to me. I meet him halfway.

 _Call me Zella_ , I say, though that is not my name.

He is beautiful as few men are, and I like that I can see the pulse flutter in his slim throat, as if he knows he is a hunted thing.

 

I wait until I have him pinned down and busy with the folds of my skirts, and then I fish in my bodice for the damp rag, not breathing near it myself. I press it over his nose and lips with the strength of both my hands.

It works quicker than chloroform; it was designed to.

His eyes widen, but he does not struggle. I will admit that I did not expect that.

How many men welcome what may be deadly?

 

His eyes flutter shut before more than a minute passes. I step back and examine him, lying like a fallen sun-god with his copper hair in rays upon the pillow.

For a fighter and a killer, for the son of such a father, he has so few scars.

Most women would content themselves with the ridged red scratches I scored on his chest and shoulders, but I sought him out for more than my own enjoyment, and now I mark him with my teeth. I sweep his hair away to the side and bite through the thin skin at the curve of his neck. I bite until the blood flows to the hollows of his throat.

One so beautiful will hate such a mark, I think—though that is not its only purpose.

And one so still and victim-like, not even fighting to breathe, will be sorry to wake at all.

I rummage through the pockets of his long coat, his trousers, his shirt. There is nothing there but a pocketknife, a whiskey flask and two letters, both written in his own hand.

One is to his mother, and it tells me nothing but a child’s blubbering fears. I burn that first, lifting the glass from my oil lamp. _Dear Mother, I am sorrier than I can say_ —it wisps to black ash. I glance over my shoulder, but he lies in a stupor still, his face slack and the bleeding slowing. From the rise and fall of his flat-planed stomach, I can see that he lives.

 _I_ should not be content, to live as he does.

I read the second letter. _Dear Fingon_ —and who is that? All his brothers are with him. There is only one sentence more: _We reach Ulmo’s Bridge tomorrow_.

This, of course, makes me laugh. If Fingon is a friend, a cousin, what would he care to know of the deeds that followed?

“You are a coward,” I say, to the man-boy on the bed, and then an impish idea takes me.

Only Annatar and Bauglir delight in my impish ideas.

I tear away the written words, _Dear Fingon, We reach Ulmo’s Bridge tomorrow_ , and I burn that to flakes as I did the first letter. I leave the rest of the paper aside. And then, crossing to the bedside, I press against the oozing wound with my fingers, till he moans in his sleep, till my hand comes away well-stained.

I print that blood on the torn paper. With one of my own pens, I write across the top—

_Feanor & sons arrive in S.P. October 17. I took the eldest to myself, and marked him._

Bauglir will know exactly what I mean.


End file.
